(Journey to the West Series Interpretation No. 85)
Text/Walking with a snail
One
If you want to say that the happiest immortal in the journey to the west, it must be Comrade Li Jing, the king of Tota.
Everyone says that the immortals are good, but the immortals are not only forbidden to marry, but they are not even allowed to fall in love: kui timber wolf has taken a fancy to the maid of the Phi Xiang Temple and has to go to the netherworld to become a demon; the Eight Precepts of the Pig only meet the attendants of the Moon Palace, and they are beaten to the mortal world as pigs. And Li Jing not only had three sons, but also dragged his wife to give birth to a daughter in the Heavenly Palace.
It is reasonable to say that a happy and happy family like him should be satisfied, right? What is surprising is that he even has a dry daughter, and he is also the most beautiful fairy in the Journey to the West!
In the eighty-third time of the original work, the rat spirit caught Tang Monk in the bottomless pit. Sun Wukong took an embroidered shoe as a navigator into the cave to look for it, but fell into an endless maze. Just as he knelt down and begged Xiao De to take him out of the labyrinth, he smelled a strange fragrance, and along with the fragrance, he came to a place——
I saw three upside-down rooms, but near the back wall, there was a dragon swallow carving lacquer table, and there was a large golden incense burner on the table, and there were cigarettes in the stove. On it was a large gold plaque that read, "Honorable Father Li Tianwang's Throne", and a little later it read "Honorable Brother Nezha Three Princes" written.
Sun Wukong laughed. You must know that Li Tianwang and Nezha are his old rivals, and when they make a big fuss in the Heavenly Palace, Li Tianwang is the commander-in-chief of the bandits, and Nezha is the vanguard of the bandits. Although the relationship between everyone eased up after Sun Wukong joined the team of sutras, Sun Wukong still had a knot in his heart.
Now, having caught a handle from Li Tianwang, how could Sun Wukong let go of this opportunity?
Therefore, the monkey put two signs in his arms, and one douyun went to the Heavenly Palace to complain to the Jade Emperor.
When the Jade Emperor saw that the evidence of the people's family was conclusive, it was not easy to cover up, so he had to let Taibai Venus take him to face to face.
Who knew that as soon as Li Tianwang saw the sign, he was furious and drew his sword to cut the monkey——
I have three sons and one daughter. The big and small children are named Jinzha, who serve Rulai and act as the front protector. The second child, named Mucha, was apprenticed to Guanyin in the South China Sea. The three children got the name Nezha, and they were by my side, and they accompanied the chao in the morning and evening. A woman is seven years old, the name is Zhenying, personnel has not yet been saved, how can she be a goblin! Don't believe it, hold it out and look at it. This monkey head is really rude! And Mo said that I am the Heavenly Patriarch, and I am appointed to the office of first beheading and then playing, that is, a small people in the netherworld, and I must not make false accusations.
Just as the knife was about to fall on the monkey's head, it was caught by a slashing sword. Nezha reminded him: Father, you really have a daughter in the Netherworld!
Li Tianwang was confused: I only have four of your sisters, who have daughters?
Nezha Dao: You forgot about the Spirit Mountain in those days?
Li Tianwang suddenly realized.
Two
Time back three hundred years.
A small golden-nosed white-haired mouse inadvertently escaped to Lingshan, and for a time he was hungry. When she saw that she was about to return to the west, the little monk Jin Zenzi found her. Jin Zenzi was kind-hearted, not thinking that she was a dirty little mouse, not only stole the rice from the gang room to feed her, but also took her to the Zen room and built a clean nest.
After the little mouse came back to life, she was very grateful to Jin Zenzi, and she followed behind him to secretly listen to ru preaching, and gradually gained mana. But the clumsy Golden Zen Zi is always unenlightened and unable to break through the bottleneck of entering the Buddha.
The little mouse looked in her eyes, anxious in her heart, she found out that the use of rulai's fragrant flower treasure candle could enhance her mana, so she sneaked into the Golden Pavilion of the Great Lei Yin Temple one night and stole the incense flower treasure candle. Before she could hand it over to Jin Zenzi, Rulai learned of the news and ordered Li Tianwang's father and son to send heavenly soldiers to arrest her.
Soon, the little mouse was caught and executed according to the law of lingshan, and Jin Zenzi hurriedly interceded, so as to say the shocking proverb-
Fish farming in the water will not be fished, and the deer will be fed in the mountains to live forever.
Under rulai's hint, the rat worships Li Tianwang as a dry father and Nezha as a dry brother. Since then, he has an identity in the Three Realms, no longer a rootless stray mouse. Because of this, the Golden Cicada was demoted to the Eastern Soil to become a Tang monk in the name of taking a nap in class, and then entrusted him with the heavy responsibility of taking the scriptures and letting him practice again.
The rat spirit waited for Tang Monk in the bottomless pit, thinking that he could renew the leading edge, but he knew that Tang Monk had forgotten his past life and only wanted to learn the scriptures wholeheartedly. The mouse spirit sighed and said:
"O Elders! I only say that the front edge of the world is tied with a red rope, and the fish and water phase and the two meanings are thick. Unexpectedly, the Mandarin Duck is now broken up, and the Luan Phoenix is west and east! The blue bridge is difficult to achieve, and the Buddhist temple will be empty. I want to say goodbye today and meet you again in what year! ”
So, why can't Li Tianwang remember this dry daughter? Quite simply, the identities of the two are too different, one is the commander-in-chief of the Heavenly Palace, the other is the stray mouse spirit, because of the reason, Li Tianwang had to accept this dry daughter, but he did not agree with her heart at all, so when Sun Wukong found him, he cried out.
And the relationship between Nezha and Li Tianwang was not good, so he was more sympathetic to the mouse spirit, and naturally remembered this matter clearly.
Later, Li Tianwang's father and son went down to the netherworld and brought the mouse essence back to the heavenly court.
Three
So, why did Rulai have to let Li Tianwang recognize this dry daughter, is it really selfish? What was the author's intention in writing this?
It turned out that it was not because Rulai was confused by the beauty of the rat, but because of an allusion to a "rat grave".
The Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty (zhonghua bookstore edition, p. 732) records that fifty or sixty miles west of the royal city of Qu Sadan (in the area of present-day Hotan) lived a group of rats, but these were not ordinary rats, but divine rats as big as hedgehogs.
Once, the Xiongnu invaded the qu satan kingdom and surrounded the capital city, seeing that the wall was about to fall and break the country. The king suddenly remembered the legend of the divine mouse, so he set up an incense case and asked for the help of the divine rat. I didn't expect it to really come true. That night, the king dreamed of the rat king, and the rat king told him, "You are attacking the enemy camp tonight, and we will come to help, remember."
So the king immediately got up and ordered the soldiers to make three more meals and four more to attack. The Xiongnu woke up from their sleep, but the stirrups could not be mounted, the armor could not be put on the body, the bow could not be used for arrows, and it turned out that all of them were bitten by rats.
After qu satan was saved, he regarded the rats as holy relics and built tombs for them, which is the origin of the rat soil graves.
The Rat King in Dan dan Urik woodcuts
And the master of these rats is King Vishaman. Later, after Vishamon followed Buddhism into the Central Plains, he was placed on the body of Li Jing, a famous General of the Tang Dynasty.
At first, this Vishamon King was a Buddhist monk, but just in time for taoism to lack excellent talents, he forcibly snatched him up and changed his name to Tota Li Tianwang.
In this way, the rat essence was originally a subordinate of King Vishaman, so Lao Wu wrote her as the righteous daughter of King Li Tianwang, which was not a nonsense.
However, Lao Wu borrowed this story to illustrate a truth: what kind of people, what kind of circles. If you are just a mouse spirit, even if the heaven-given opportunity is squeezed into the upper class, there will be no sense of existence, many people have added you WeChat, but even what you look like people can't remember, let alone make friends with you.
If you want to become the center of the circle, only by constantly improving your rank will everyone look at you with surprise, and such a circle can really help you. Just like Sun Wukong, even if Li Tianwang once looked down on this demon monkey a hundred times, he finally had to go to the nether realm to do things for him.